Jan. 6 – Solar System and Beyond

Welcome back to class!  I hope you all had a relaxing and re-energizing break.

Here are some important dates to keep in mind for the end of the term:

• Jan. 10, Friday: Quest
• Jan. 13 - 17: Lab exam, space assignment
• Jan. 20 - 23: Reviews
• Jan. 24 - 30: Exams
• Jan. 31: Exam Review Day

REVIEW
See if you can answer these questions to see how much you remember:

1. Which one is the biggest?
A) Mercury
B) Venus
C) Earth
D) Mars

2. Which one is the smallest?
A) Jupiter
B) Saturn
C) Uranus
D) Neptune

3. Which one is the surface of the sun?
A) Convective zone
B) Photosphere
C) Chromosphere
D) Corona

4. What Phase of the moon is this?

A) Waning Crescent
B) Waxing Crescent
C) Waning Gibbous
D) Waxing Gibbous

5. Which star is the hottest?

6. Sirius is 8.15 e 13 km away.  How many light years away is it?
  1 light year = 9.46 e 12 km

ANSWERS

1. C
2. D
3. B
4. C
5. A
6. 8.61 light years

Here's the new material for today:

Learning Goals: Understand how the solar system formed and its place in the galaxy.

Success Criteria: You can describe the formation of the solar system and the structure of galaxies.

Solar System Formation

Watch this video and see if you can summarize the Nebula Theory that forms our solar system.

Nebula Theory

 - Nebula contains dust and particles

 - particles collected into a disc due to gravity

 - sun formed in the middle, all planets orbit in the same direction

 - rocky planets formed closer to the sun, gas planets on the outside.

Outside the solar system

 - Stars clusters are held together by gravity

 - open cluster: up to 1000 stars

 - Gobular clusters: up to millions of stars outside of galaxies

An open cluster of stars.

 - Edwin Hubble discovered that other galaxies existed.

        Elliptical: oval shaped, older

        Spiral: old stars in middle, many different kinds 

        Lenticular: disc with bulge in middle

        Irregular: no shape

Irregular shapes can form from colliding galaxies.

Milky Way: Our galaxy is a 2 armed spiral

  - over 200 billion stars

  - over 100 000 ly across

  - John S. Plaskett discovered that we are 30 000 ly from the middle.

An image showing where our Earth sits inside of our Universe.

Earth < Solar system < Milky Way < Local Group < Virgo Supercluster < Universe

Homework

• P. 343 # 1-5, 7-10
• P. 351 # 1, 2, 6, 7, 9
• P. 369 # 1-3, 6, 7, 8, 11